May 2013
4 posts
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Sing, O Muse!
The Odyssey famously begins with an exhortation, here translated by
Robert Fagles:
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
And sing Homer almost certainly did. The epic tradition was one of
song, in which the poet would re-work the framework of each story with
every telling, building up...
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“I think one of the most common misperceptions about the Old Masters is to...”
– David Hockney, from part 5 of this great piece of journalism.
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Italian Lessons at Sea
My ship steamed out of Barcelona in the late afternoon. I had reserved a bunk in a four-person cabin aboard an overnight ferry to Genoa. The four-bunk cabin is the modern equivalent of steerage: the least expensive available passage that doesn’t involve sleeping on a deck chair under an open sky.
The ship was a monstrous hotel-floatant, a little bit Vegas, a little bit Pasadena. The decor was...
April 2013
7 posts
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“It has been found that electronic calculators often require elaborate logic...”
– Logic Machines and Diagrams, Martin Gardner
“What collegiality means in practice is: ‘He knows how to operate...”
– David Graeber
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“The amount of wealth that an economy can create is limited by the amount of...”
– Mr. Soddy’s Ecological Economy
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Borges and Boyer
From the wonderful
Borges episode of BBC’s
Arena:
INTERVIEWER: Borges, you speak of HG Wells. In what way did he
influence you?
BORGES: I think he taught me that a fantastic story should — to be
accepted by the imagination, he said that his stories used only one
fantastic element. For example, he wrote Invisible Man, about a lone
invisible man in London. Then another,...
“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive...”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813
March 2013
9 posts
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“Facebook is available 24/7 and for the most part, so am I. The days when I even...”
– Sheryl Sandberg’s idea of a life well lived.
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“Our main result, which is independent of the market considered, is that standard...”
– Are random trading strategies more successful than technical ones?
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“Psychologically, the economic aim of the individual is, always has been, and...”
– Frederick Soddy, 1921
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“If he does not fervently feel it to be pleasanter and sweeter to return from a...”
– Montaigne, from an Essai on education.
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“Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the...”
– Leibniz, whose sentiments I share regarding “brains in vats”, “it’s all a dream”, &c.
“Culture and refinement all alone are not enough to do so. Ideal aspirations are...”
– William James, What Makes a Life Significant
February 2013
3 posts
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“I think that to all living things there is a pleasure in the exercise of their...”
– William Morris, Useful Work versus Useless Toil, 1883.
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January 2013
33 posts
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Looking out the window of his lifepod, the astronaut records his observations:
— I see liquid water on the planet’s surface. The computer says the temperature will reach 9C in a few hours. I’m going to don my space suit and visit a café for lunch.
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This quarry cries on havoc. O proud death,
What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,
That thou so many princes at a shot
So bloodily hast struck?
— Hamlet: Act 5, Scene 2.
A NOTE LEFT ON THE FLOOR OF A CAVE
We have read the instructions for departure. The ship will do most
of the work, thankfully. At least our scientists got that much right.
We’ll sail above the moon and...
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His hair uncombed and unsung music in his mouth, Declan contemplates
the geological skeleton that underlies the surrounding fields as
glasses of neat whisky whisk past his pint of plain. He fancies every
farm and wants nothing more than to drip his life quietly away in the
country, but there are no prospects, and sober and smiling days are
well behind him. He lives all day on his morning meal,...
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THE PARADOX OF LIFE
A bit beyond perception’s reach
I sometimes believe I see
that Life is two locked boxes, each
containing the other’s key.
— Piet Hein
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Circling, proceeding, halting, the sun sits still and waits to watch
them recline on a blanket beneath trees, picnic basket open,
champagne glasses in hand.
Love illuminating this frozen moment, he gives silent thanks to be here
and now and not pushing a wheelbarrow before the eyes and the noise of
the lucky few with time etching his skeleton on a gravestone.
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“If there are 10 readers out there, let’s assume I’m never going to reach two of...”
– George Saunders
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We sat silent, not yet tired of being ourselves, each holding the end
of a yarn the length of life and counting mingled mingling threads
woven by warp and woof with living flowers. Petals floated in the air,
turning slowly as they fell, each coloured by our circumstances.
Marveling at strange discoveries, we became the prey of restless
foolish impulses — responsive curves magnetically...
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“When seriously explored, the short story seems to me the most difficult and...”
– Truman Capote
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I still walk about my yesterdays along familiar footpaths, and
cannot — even in an uncertain whisper — tell the present what it was
to have seen in shattered windows faintly reflected starlight.
